Question About Replying to Yelp Reviews and SEO
-
Hi guys,
I was wondering if responding to negative yelp reviews would in turn boost yelps seo ranking for my business name. I'm trying to direct attention away from yelp being that we've had little success having real clients get through the review filter. We unfortunately have nasty competition that seems to be leaving fake negative reviews incessantly.
-
For this reason you can contact to yelp that tell them people make fake feedback for your list. Also you can see there report review option. It will also work for remove fake review.
-
Hi Daniel!
Thanks for asking a good question. It sounds like you've got a complex issue here, so I'll number my thoughts to reply:
-
If your competitors are spamming you on Yelp, then your first step should be to document that as much as you possibly can and report it to Yelp: https://www.yelp-support.com/Reporting_an_Inappropriate_Review?l=en_US Be prepared to offer any proofs you can that these are actually competitors doing this to you.
-
No one that I know of has ever published a study as to whether owner responses on Yelp impact the rankings of Yelp listings. It's an interesting question, but not one I can respond to with data, unfortunately.
-
If you are able to get Yelp to remove spam reviews, problem solved. If, however, you can't prove to them that these are your competitors and they leave the reviews live, then I would strongly recommend replying to them. Otherwise, what you are doing is giving up any control you have over writing any part of this narrative of your brand online. Yelp reviews are public, and negative reviews with no owner responses tell the public that the brand doesn't care and leaves customers in the lurch when they have a problem. The opposite of this can be a brand like yours that responds with accountability and support when a customer complains, showing the public that your business takes care of customers and will take care of them. However, it's definitely challenging to do this when a review is actually spam. It all feels rather fake to apologize for a fictitious negative experience, but the thing is, your potential future customers don't know the negative experience is fake. So, you just have to do your best to demonstrate that your brand listens and cares, even if you believe what you're listening to is fictitious.
-
It also sounds like you need to work on getting real reviewers that meet Yelp's filter criteria to review you. Darren Shaw wrote a good tutorial on this last year, and I think it will really help you with this: https://whitespark.ca/blog/how-to-get-yelp-reviews-that-wont-get-filtered-and-improve-your-rating/
-
Be sure you are building up an excellent review base on other platforms like Google, Facebook and whatever directories matter most to your market.
-
Hang in there. You can't ignore Yelp right now, but they are only one portion of your reputation, and you're not alone in having a hard time navigating their filters and spam problems. Hopefully, you can prove you've been targeted with spam and get some/all of it removed. But, if you can't, re-focus on the core of providing exceptional customer experiences and diversifying the number of places you receive reviews, and that should help you continue to grow a positive reputation. Review sites are all having a hard time with spam, and it's their problem to solve if they want to remain relevant to consumers.
Hope this helps!
-
-
Great question. I have also asked about how much weight content on yelp pages hold in terms of SEO.
Definitely reach out to yelp about this issue. Not quite sure about the SEO aspects, but from a brand perception aspect, you definitely want to respond to negative reviews.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Local SEO - 2 Locations
Hi SEO pros, If I'm undertaking SEO for a company which has a single website (no location specific pages) and 2 office locations I'm curious on a couple of points: 1. Obviously setting up 2 locations in GMB is a must, but in terms of citation building is it just a case of needing to input 2 citations into every directory (one for each address) 2. Link building - assuming this doesn't change much from when you're ranking for one location? 3. Schema markup - Do i need to create 2 x local business schema and input both into the headers? 4. On-page SEO - trying to rank for 2 locations I'm assuming is much more difficult as you can't optimise both location keywords throughout the site - does anyone know a way around this?
Local Listings | | Jack11661 -
Google My Business Question
I work for a large organization with a number of locations. There is a Google My Business listing for us, under our umbrella name, that lists an old address (building we no longer occupy) and says that we are "permanently closed". I believe this is an unverified listing because there is an "own this listing?" link in it. In order to take control of the listing, Google gives us three options: call, text or snail mail. The number is an automated line so calling and texting aren't going to work and snail mail wouldn't work b/c we're no longer in the building. Anyone know how we can take control of this listing so that it doesn't look like we're "permanently closed?"
Local Listings | | yaelslater0 -
Local SEO Issue or Penguin? Or both?
Hey folks I have a fairly complicated SEO issue we have been looking at for a few years now. There are two parts to this problem so would be interested to get the input of the community here and any experienced in Penguin and Local SEO issues. I am going to have to change the names to protect the innocent a bit here as some of the issue relates to a competitor and a shared address. History My client originally worked for company A which we will call Events R us. He then set up on his own at a new address and lets call his company Fantastic Events. EventsRus never had a good website or SEO Fantastic Events set up a great website and really focused on adding tons of relevant content for all the myriad event options available and subsequently did really well. This is a few years back and they were also doing some article marketing on sites like ezinearticles.com to build links (1). As time went on they did get a bit carried away with these low quality links and were buying $5 spun content articles and other low quality links. They ranked really well for a few key terms. There was a suspected local SEO issue as fantastic events used the same office as their fathers business called fantastic finance and the citations / phone number issues etc all had to be cleared up (2). Fantastic Events and Events R Us remained friends and over time Fantastic Events moved to the same farm address as Events R Us so they could offer a wider range of services based on the farm (and ran by fantastic events) and to some extent run away from the address confusion with the same office and very similar name to the other fantastic finance business. Events R Us wanted some of the Fantastic Events success and built a new website and largely copied the website of Fantastic Events - at times even lifting entire pages of content but certainly mirroring the structure of the site. Fantastic Events tussled with them for a few years over this and over time they updated the content but the structure and services and address all pretty much mirrored what was offered on the Fantastic Events site. (3) Two companies - same address (it's a farm so whilst there are different barns I believe Google can only get as far as the farm gate so same address to all intents and purposes. Same services give or take. Events R Us was the older company overall by several years and was at the farm address many years longer than Fantastic Events (4). Fantastic Events starts running a blog and adding regular, useful event orientated content. The first true team building blog out there as far as we could tell and traffic tripled over a six month period. Penguin hits and Fantastic Events loses a lot of traction - this gets worse with Penguin 2.0. Both the homepage and the evening events page lose visibility and traction. The owner gives up on the blog to a large degree. Subsequent clean up happens and is rigorous - all bad links are pretty much removed and the remaining elements are disavowed. (90% of it is actually gone by now). Penguin 3.0 comes and no recovery at all. Nothing. If anything it gets worse and the once strong blog is now losing traction. Events R Us starts to do really well in search for exactly the same terms that Fantastic Events used to do well for. In particular one page ranks for exactly the same keywords and in exactly the same position (#1) as what was believed to be the primary traffic driver on the Fantastic Events site. It is almost like they exchanged positions and Events R Us went from nowhere to a strong footing with some national and local keywords and Fantastic Events fell from grace. A new website is built. All content is refreshed and bought up to date. Some light investment back in the blog. Some light link building is done around digital PR and infographics. Some initial movement in the right direction but overall this did not move the dial. Certain pages on the site that used to rank are nowhere - looks very much like a page level / keyword level penguin penalty. These same pages rank great, often first on the competitor site (an exchange of positions to some extent). Advice from myself and other esteemed consultants was to clean up, build some good links and wait for Penguin 4.0 to remove that eventuality. Also that the address issue could be causing some local SEO issue where Google believes the two businesses are one and has somehow merged the two with some local SEO filter or some such (same business with multiple websites at same address). Penguin 4.0 comes along and no improvements. Events R us sit pretty. Feeling is that the local issue must play a part here now that Penguin should be eliminated due to the extensive link clean up etc and there must now be some action to resolve this address / local issue. Issues low quality links - but cleaned up 100% now. same business name and address as fathers business initially older business copied the structure and content of newer business moved to same address as older more established business with very similar content older business now seems to have taken all the exact keywords and positions the newer business used to occupy Penguin 4.0 and no resolution. Local SEO issue seemingly remains Summary So we are left in a difficult position. The business does not want to move. But if there is some filtering or merging going on here then how can we get around this? The client is likely collateral damage to an algorithmic component designed to stop single businesses having multiple websites. I know there are reports of this happening but I have never seen such a thing for an innocent business like this but the nature of the address (two separate barns on a gated farm) and the history and similarities between the businesses makes this difficult. Things are somewhat desperate though - a move has to be made now. Even if that is a physical one. The client has considered a virtual address to take that variable out the picture but I have advised caution. I am even cautious about a change in physical address. Google has a long memory. If such a move was made at considerable expense would it help or would the other business retain Is the best option a new start? New brand, address, website, services etc - cut all ties with the historic Fantastic Events brand and by association the Events R Us brand. This is not a recommendation I can quickly or easily make so would be really interested to hear the feedback on anyone who has come across such a multi faceted and complex issue before. This is a tough one. We know what we are doing on the local front. We know what we are doing on the Penguin front. We know how to build links and authority. We are doing this work of the clock to help a long term friend / client get back to where they really deserve to be. The history is not spotty clean but the good work and effort far outway a short spell building dodgy links several years ago now. As an SEO consultant I don't want to advise for the company to rebrand and move offices at considerable expense but whilst I have a theoretical understanding of the issue how can we prove it and be sure this is the best possible advice? Thanks folks - hope this at least makes for interesting reading. This is something of an edge case. A good business likely caught up in a filter designed to stop abuse. Cheers
Local Listings | | Marcus_Miller
Marcus1 -
Dental Practice Acquisition SEO
Hi Mozzers! I have an interesting online marketing challenge I would love to hear the community's thoughts and advice! My clients (a dental practice consisting of 3 dentists) are taking over (buying) the practice of another dentist across the hall (same address except for suite #), who is retiring (we'll refer to him as "retiree" from here out for simplicity). The retiree's dental practice has close to zero online presence. He has citations across the web (google listing, yelp, healthgrades, etc), but no website. My question is: How would you go about consolidating the web presence for my clients? We want to get the traffic for existing and potentially new patients searching for the retiree. The retiree isn't retiring right away. His presence for the next several months will be vital to my clients' success as he will introduce new patients to my clients and pass the torch, so to speak. Would you create a landing page for the retiree on my clients' website & claim/add my clients' NAPW on all of the citations? That seems to be the best & simplest idea I've come up with so far, but I would LOVE to hear if anyone has any creative thoughts or ideas. THANKS!
Local Listings | | Derrald0 -
Local SEO: Special charakters in brand name?
Hey guys, we run a local gym in Germany located in Nuremberg called: "STUDIO N°1 - natürlich fit". Our domain is: www.studio-no1.de We are currently working on a new website since our current Website isn't really SEO optimized. Until then I would like to start optimizing some off-page attributes. As far as I know one of the main points in Local SEO is that your firm is registered at important directories. In our case we are already registred in most of the important german directories. The problem is that our oficicial company name has a special charakter included. This means that in some cases we have "N°1" and in some others "No1! Our Google Business name for example has "N°1", facbook not (no special charakter allowed). Germanys most important site for listings: Gelbeseiten, doesn't even allow special charakters in brand names.... On which name should I focus to get all the business listings to have identical NAP informations? Does it even matter? Schould I focus on "STUDIO No1 - natürlich fit" or "STUDIO N°1 - natürlich fit"? I hope you could understand my problem. Big Thanks Jonas
Local Listings | | Jo_Da0 -
Yelp 3rd Party Reviews
Our team would like to use Yelps 3rd party integration on our national industry specific platform directory to bolster ratings and reviews until we can organically generate our own. However, I have SEO concerns over doing this. Specifically, we're concerned over the following: Publishing massive amounts of content that has already been published on Yelp. Worth noting that Yelp's review integration does not hide the the content behind an iFrame. Publishing a backlink providing attribution to Yelp on every one of 40,000 profiles linking back to contextual Yelp profiles. Less worried here as Yelp is reputable and is not likely to hurt ratings. This is required by Yelp under their TOS. I think this is a pretty good growth strategy on the part of yelp, but I have worries that this could induce lasting damage on our own SEO that we're working to ramp up. My questions are: Should I have concerns about duplicative content? Is Yelp big enough for Google to know about this 3rd party integration? If I ensure that R&Rs are only posted on pages that have a noindex, nofollow, do we protect ourselves from duplicative content. (ie. Google bots will not review this content, so we will not have to worry about them finding and attributing duplicative content penalties.) Please let me know your thoughts. Thanks!
Local Listings | | PetSite0 -
SEO issues with Physician and Practice not ranking for their own names
I've inherited an SEO client who's got all kinds of ranking problems. Currently his name Dr. Laddis shows up for his old practice, Saratoga Cardiology Associates (http://saratogacardiology.com/) instead of his current one Cardiology Specialty Services (http://cardiologyspecialtyservices.org/ ) He's also showing up with a G+ for the old practice that's listed as closed. The 2nd listing is for his bio on the hospital page.(<cite class="_Rm">https://saratogahospital.org/doctor/theodoros-laddis-md-facc/ )</cite> Then come the usual Dr directories. His YouTube channel shows up. But his actual website isn't until the middle of the 2nd page. I'm also having similar issues getting the practice to show up in search (http://cardiologyspecialtyservices.org/ ). As I was coming on board, they also had a name change from Saratoga Cardiology Specialty Services to Cardiology Specialty Services. Their G+ local business page has the custom URL for Saratoga Cardiology Specialty Services but the name on the page is Cardiology Specialty Services. Their website is actually part of the hospital multisite with a URL redirect. While the site shows up for "cardiologist Saratoga" their G+ page doesn't show up.(https://plus.google.com/+Saratogacardiologyspecialtyservices/about ). I've also done on-page SEO and am still in the process of submitting to directories. Any thoughts on what the hangup is or what I can do to clear up this mess would be appreciated.
Local Listings | | IT-dmd0 -
Looking for SEO Specialist Contractor!
Polyvore is looking for an SEO Specialist (Contract role)! Click here to apply: https://hire.jobvite.com/j?aj=oZv4Yfwg&s=Moz As an SEO expert, you will help acquire users to Polyvore through organic search. You will also be key to helping engineering team understand SEO best practices. Our ideal service provider is someone who has a deep understanding of SEO in the e-commerce space. Key Responsibilities Audit all Polyvore pages and help the engineering team understand their relative importance to SEO Provide SEO best practices for e-commerce space and help build out automated tools to ensure these best practices Help investigate issues related to SEO including but not limited to changes in organic search traffic Review upcoming designs from SEO perspective & suggest improvements before the changes are implemented What does success look like? Overall increase in organic search traffic to Polyvore A set of automated SEO tools that help catch SEO issues proactively A monitoring plan to catch SEO issues early (i.e. which tools to use, what to track, how to predict potential issues) Click here to apply: https://hire.jobvite.com/j?aj=oZv4Yfwg&s=Moz
Local Listings | | seomoz_polyvore.com0